Dance, Is it working yet?

Clod Ensemble’s latest medical meditation asks audience members to monitor their own reaction to the show

Clod Ensemble was founded in 1995 by director Suzy Willson and composer Paul Clark . Since then, the company has created a variety of performance pieces for theatres, galleries and found spaces. Much of their work is concerned with medicine and anatomy. Must (2007) took audiences on a journey through the varied landscape of one woman’s body. The award-winning Under Glass presented dancers in glass containers, like living specimens in a laboratory.

Clod’s new work, Placebo, continues in this vein. In medicine, the “placebo response” occurs when a patient is given an inactive or fake treatment and experiences an improvement. Tests have shown that all sorts of factors, including a doctor’s “performance”, can impact on a treatment’s efficacy. Ex...